Month: January 2014

notaboynotagrl:

rapeculturerealities:

Ok, so… this isn’t what this blog is about but since you brought it here we’ll go ahead and go there but for anyone who decides they need to respond this will be my only word on the subject, any future asks on the subject will be ignored.

In short you are wrong.  The two sex binary is a flawed social construct that literally has no basis in reality whatsoever.  Some form if intersex characteristics happen in approximately 2% of all live births in humans.  That’s 2 out of every 100 which in a world with billions of people is a lot of people that don’t fit into either “male” or “female” and that obviously doesn’t include trans* people which makes the statistics higher.  And that also doesn’t include the people who aren’t technically intersex but also don’t fully fit the biological construct of what a male or female “should” be which is far far more people that you realize or most medical doctors willing to admit.

In our society sexing is based on 5 criteria:

• genes – XX or XY chromosomes with variations happening for XO, XXY, and XXX
• gonads – ovaries or testes except that people with vaginas can have testes, people with penises can have ovaries, and people can be born with both ovaries and testes
• genitalia – a penis or a vagina except that people can be born with both and men can have vaginas and women can have penises 
• secondary sex characteristics – in theory men are supposed to have large amounts of thick, coarse body hair, a low waist/hip ratio, broad shoulders, undeveloped breasts, and deep voices while women are supposed to have small amounts of fine, light colored, soft body hair, a high waist/hip ratio, petite shoulders, developed breasts, and high voices except that in real life it’s entirely possible for people to have combination of those characteristics or for men to have “feminine” secondary sex characteristics and women to have “masculine” secondary sex characteristics
• hormone patterns – in theory men are supposed to be high testosterone and low estrogen and women are supposed to have high estrogen and low testosterone but in reality there is far far more variation within “each” sex than between “each” sex including women having “masculine” hormone patterns and men having “feminine” hormone patterns all without those people having any sort of “disease” or “disorder” or anything being wrong with them at all.  

Once we take into account all 5 of those criteria an actual majority of people don’t line up with either male or female in all 5 areas which means it’s not possible to classify most people along the strict binary the way people like you would like to.  So, sure, there are things in this world that qualify as technically male or technically female but the idea that there’s some sort of scientific basis for a strict binary where there are only ever two options and people are only ever male or female is laughable.  It’s utter bullshit and trying to force people into those boxes when they don’t fit does a hell of a lot more harm than good.  Nothing positive comes from that kind of bigotry while actually being willing to accept people as they are or as they choose to identify has legitimately positive outcomes in the world.  

The main source material for all of this comes from Anne Fausto-Sterling’s book Sexing the Body.  She’s got a Ph.D. in biology so I’m pretty sure she knows what she’s talking about and I’m willing to bet she knows a hell of a lot more about this stuff than you do, dear anon.  Try educating yourself instead of pretending that you’re an expert because you spent a few weeks learning the bare minimum of this material in high school at some point in your life.

this is the best post i’ve seen in a millennium